Cat + Jack: booze and books
Cat had made a killing after the incident with the doors and windows. Oh, she wasn't thinking about it too much, because Cat wasn't the type to pick things apart in her brain. No, that wasn't her, and she was just glad to reap the rewards from bad things, because someone ought to. And that someone? Might as well be her. It was opportunistic, sure, and she would consider that a compliment. Look, life? Was about surivial. And if there was anything Cat knew how to do? It was survive. Hell, it could even be said she was thriving out here, in the middle of nowhere special. Even Bruce's remix-return hadn't plunged her into the drowning despair she'd felt in New Jersey, and wasn't that something?
Everyone talked to her about their situations, and no one from home seemed to take into consideration the bumps in her road. Twenty years and a relationship that crumbled in a parking garage, a confession that amounted to 'I think I was wrong about being in love with you.' A missing daughter, one that hated her. A serum swirling around her veins, gamma radiation and who knew what else, and no answers about the missing memories that went along with the medical questionmarks. Oh, she'd been through plenty, and all of that was recent, and the old things? The orphange? The brothel? Those things barely registered. And Cat knew it was her own fault that everyone thought she was just fine. Cat? She'd cultivated that particular facade very, very well. But sometimes? Sometimes it stung.
As for the book she'd sent Jack? It was deliberate. Of course it was, and Cat wasn't above making a statement with cracked spine and pages between. But she wasn't going to make him talk about it. Oh, Cat didn't pry. She sent the book, and she intended to let Jack come to his own conclusions about the moral of the story. Cat's meddling these days? Was limited. Since she'd tried to help Sasha, only to have her sister draw away as a result. Cat was steering clear of active involvement whenever she could manage it. After all, caring? Didn't get you anywhere, and that was the lesson she'd re-learned in the past months. Better to be shallow and fickle, and then everyone thought the worst of you. But that? Was a controlled burn. Deliberate, and it was fine to be hated when she engineered it herself.
When Jack walked into the bar, Cat was at the pool table, stick in her hand and a few deputies at the felt with her. Johnny sang, and Cat looked up and chuckled when she saw the man in the shirt that had seen better days. She wore jeans, a black t-shirt that was snug, and some incredible boots. She handed her stick off, and she crossed the small bar to stop in front of Jack. "Beer or something harder?" she asked, and that? Was her greeting. She didn't tell him not to drink, and there wasn't a hint of lecture in her cat's-eye-lined eyes. Cat? Wasn't meddling.